Spanish banks have received a new blow of European justice, which definitively clarifies the controversy of the existing deadlines for claiming mortgage expenses, considered abusive and void by the Supreme Court.
He Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) has ruled this Thursday that the limitation period to claim mortgage expenses must begin to count from the moment there is a final ruling to declare that abusive clause null and void.
Until now, this matter was not clear. The banks had considered that the statute of limitations, which is five years in all communities except Catalonia (ten), started counting from 2019when the Supreme Court ruled that banks had to return these expenses to clients.
With this ruling, the European High Court complements a previous CJEU ruling published last January which stated that the period to claim mortgage expenses will not begin to run before a consumer becomes aware of the abusive nature of a contractual clause.
“The door is now open for thousands of consumers can claim what was abusively charged by the banks, since until the nullity of their loans is declared, the statute of limitations does not begin to run for them to return the amounts unduly paid,” he says. Irene Becerralegal director of reclamador.es.
A loan signed in 1999
The matter on which the CJEU has ruled at the request of the Supreme Court is that relating to two consumers who complained to the banking entity with which they contracted their mortgage for refund of opening costs after the contractual clauses relating to them were declared abusive.
In this case, The mortgage loan was signed in 1999 and in 2017 those affected requested the annulment of the clause before a court of first instance in Barcelona, ​​which agreed with them.
The bank then appealed to the Provincial Court of Barcelona arguing that the claim period had expired. The entity stated that the matter had prescribed because it began after the payment of the mortgage expenses. The court then considered the clause null but He also considered that the deadlines had expired. Those affected later raised their case to the Supreme Court.
The CJEU does not at any time question the duration of the limitation periods for claiming reimbursement of mortgage expenses, but only focuses on specifying from what moment does time start to run. Mortgage expenses can only be claimed by people who signed or paid off their mortgage before June 2019.
